She had that soft-spoken, almost breathy kind of voice that made you listen, made you lean in so you could hear every syllable, made you believe anything. She could've said King Kong was about to crush us, she could have made us believe Martians had landed.

Instead she used it to make us pay attention to her, focusing all of her energy on us and then she poured it on. I don't even remember what she said, like after a hypnosis act when the clucking fools turned back into normal people, I just remember that her voice called and we dragged our eyes away from the scene before us and we looked at her.

And once she had us, her voice went hard and she yelled "RUN!" and it was like a slap, a bucket of cold water, the horn of an oncoming truck and we startled out of our frozen astonishment and ran as fast and as hard as we could.

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"Insha'Allah and the crik don't rise..."

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What's that Neil Gaiman quote, from Sandman? Something like "You're not asking me if I believe in magic, you're asking me if I believe in weird shit" or something like that. I can't remember it exactly, and I can't find it. Anyone remember it? It's near the end, when Daniel is stolen.

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The BF made me cupcakes (yellow cake and chocolate frosting WITH SPRINKLES!). Man, I loves me some cupcakes. And he served me the first one with a lit candle and sang Happy Birthday. Such a nice guy. Of course I made a wish.